AI Agent Manus Partners With Alibaba’s Qwen to Develop Chinese Version
Chinese AI agent Manus is collaborating with Alibaba Group Holding’s large language model (LLM) team to develop a Chinese version of the application. The partnership follows Manus’ rapid rise in popularity in recent days.
Manus will work with Alibaba’s Qwen team to meet the needs of Chinese users, the company said in a statement on Tuesday. The two firms are ensuring that all Manus functions will be available on domestic models and computing platforms, though no launch date has been announced.
A representative from Alibaba’s cloud computing unit confirmed the collaboration, stating that both parties are working on open-source models. The representative also expressed Alibaba’s interest in partnering with more global AI innovators.
Manus, developed by Tencent Holdings-backed start-up Butterfly Effect, has gained attention in the AI community following its invitation-only online preview last week. The AI agent demonstrated its ability to perform various practical tasks, such as creating customised websites.
AI agents are designed to autonomously execute tasks on behalf of users or systems. They generate plans consisting of specific tasks and subtasks to achieve a goal using available resources.
Butterfly Effect’s focus on AI applications highlights another avenue for innovation among Chinese AI start-ups. This follows DeepSeek’s recent breakthrough in developing AI models at significantly lower costs and computing power compared to larger tech firms.
Manus was built on existing LLMs, including Anthropic’s Claude and fine-tuned versions of Qwen, according to Butterfly Effect co-founder and chief scientist Peak Ji Yichao. Ji shared this information in a post on X on Monday.
The AI agent has been available as an invitation-only web preview. Initially, its webpage was only in English, but it has since been updated to support nine additional languages, including Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish.
Alibaba is among several major tech companies that have open-sourced their large AI models. The Qwen models, which have been open-sourced since August 2023, are powering some of the world’s leading AI models, according to collaborative machine-learning platform Hugging Face.
As of the end of January, the Qwen series had contributed to the development of more than 90,000 models globally, according to Alibaba’s latest data.
AI agent Manus is partnering with Alibaba’s Qwen team to develop a Chinese version.
The collaboration aims to ensure Manus functions on domestic models and computing platforms.
Manus, developed by Tencent-backed Butterfly Effect, has gained global attention.
Source: SCMP